According to Ofcom, the UK is one of the "world's mostadvanced countries in terms of digital communications". Why might you ask? Is it because we amazing broadband speeds? Is it because we have cloud wifi covering major cities?

No. It is because – and prepare yourselves for this – we, as a nation:

spend more time watching TV than other countries

send more texts than other countries

leads the world in online advertising (WTF??)

This blows me away. It really does. Call me a cynic but the reasons given hardly amount to anything substantial or even coherent (texts,TV, online ads?).

But what if you were a government trying to push through an insanely authoritarian bill that will curtail free, public use of the internet. You might want to convince the public that Britain is a great digital nation, thus giving the impression they can be trusted to make the right decisions.

It's not as if the report is independent. It's by Ofcom, a government body. The same body who will likely gets lots of money and power from enforcing the draconian laws in Peter Mandelson and the music industry's Digital Economy Bill.

Sorry to harp on, but the report (or at least the BBC's coverage of it) sounds hollow. While it may be purely coincidence, given the nightmare of Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill which will certainly push us down any real global measure of 'digitalness' I can't help wonder if the two are connected.

**UPDATE** The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones tells me via Twitter that it's a just "a bunch of stats" Ofcom release every year. So it's more likely that it's a crappy news angle for a press release rather than anything sinister.

Comments

The Beeb should know better than to publish such tripe, but they have proved many times that they would rather recycle press releases than chase up accurate content. Ofcom is good for nothing that I can see, and I usually give credit where credit is due… a useless quango.

44% of online businesses are in rural areas, which the Govt inc Ofcom) and industry acknowledges have far below par connectivity including the fact that many are still on dial up. The Brits need to get out more and see what other countries call “digitally advanced”.